Yasiel Puig’s All-Star chances squashed

posted by Mike Oz | Big League Stew
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3 years ago

Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman topped Puig in the All-Star Final Vote, a fan vote to name the 34th member of both the American League and National League All-Star teams. Freeman received a record 19.7 million votes via online voting, text messages, and Twitter.

Puig — the Cuban rookie who has energized the Los Angeles Dodgers and taken baseball by storm — finished second, despite a flurry of #VotePuig Twitter endorsements on Thursday. Puig reportedly finished with more than 15 million votes.

On the other side of the Final Vote: Blue Jays relief pitcher Steve Delabar won the final American League spot with 9.6 million votes. He was followed by (in order): David Robertson, Joaquin Benoit, Koji Uehara and Tanner Scheppers, all five of them relief pitchers.

Delabar led AL voting all week. He owns a 1.74 ERA and has given up only 29 hits and eight earned runs in 41.1 innings. Getting elected to the All-Star Game is an exclamation mark on a revived career that, at one point, looked overafter a broken arm in 2009.

But back to the National League race, which was hotly contested and attracted tons of attention — most of which centered around whether Puig "deserved" to be an All-Star because he's only been in the big leagues since June 3. While his numbers are great and his play is exciting, coaches and players alike have said Puig hasn't done enough in that short time to prove he's worthy of an All-Star nod. Here's a comparison of Puig and Freeman's stats:

Puig could still be named to all the All-Star team as a late injury replacement, should another NL All-Star back out. He'd have to be selected either by fellow players or Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who already said he didn't think Puig deserved to be an All-Star.